The present invention relates to information processing systems for large or massive information networks, such as the internet, and more particularly to such information systems especially adapted for operation in portal and other web sites wherein a search engine operates with collaborative and content-based filtering to provide better search responses to user queries.
In the operation of the internet, a countless number of information are available for downloading from any of at least thousands of sites for consideration by a user at the user's location. A user typically connects to a portal or other web site having a search capability, and thereafter enters a particular query, i.e., a request for information relevant to a topic, a field of interest, etc. Thereafter, the search site typically employs a "spider" scanning system and a content-based filter in a search engine to search the internet and find information which match the query. This process is basically a pre-search process in which matching informons are found, at the time of initiating a search for the user's query, by comparing informons in an "informon data base" to the user's query. In essence, the pre-search process is a short term search for quickly finding and quickly identifying information entities which are content matched to the user's query.
The return list of matching informons can be very extensive according to the subject of the query and the breadth of the query. More specific queries typically result in shorter return lists. In some cases, the search site may also be structured to find web sites which probably have stored informons matching the entered query.
Collaborative data can be made available to assist in informon rating when a user actually downloads an informon, considers and evaluates it, and returns data to the search site as a representation of the value of the considered informon to the user.
In the patent application which is parent to this continuation-in-part application, i.e. Ser. No. 08/627,436, filed by the present inventors on Apr. 4, 1996, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,867,799 and hereby incorporated by reference, an advanced collaborative/content-based information filter system is employed to provide superior filtering in the process of finding and rating informons which match a user's query. The information filter structure in this system integrates content-based filtering and collaborative filtering to determine relevancy of informons received from various sites in the Internet or other network. In operation, a user enters a query and a corresponding "wire" is established, i.e., the query is profiled in storage on a content basis and adaptively updated over time, and informons obtained from the network are compared to the profile for relevancy and ranking. A continuously operating "spider" scans the network to find informons which are received and processed to determine relevancy to the individual user's wire or to wires established by numerous other users.
The integrated filter system compares received informons to the individual user's query profile data, combined with collaborative data, and ranks, in order of value, informons found to be relevant. The system maintains the ranked informons in a stored list from which the individual user can select any listed informon for consideration.
As the system continues to feed the individual user's "wire", the stored relevant informon list typically changes due to factors including a return of new and more relevant informons, adjustments in the user's query, feedback evaluations by the user for considered informons, and updatings in collaborative feedback data. Received informons are similarly processed for other users' wires established in the information filter system. Thus, the integrated information filter system performs continued long-term searching, i.e., it compares network informons to multiple users' queries to find matching informons for various users' wires over the course of time, whereas conventional search engines initiate a search in response to an individual user's query and use content-based filtering to compare the query to accessed network informons typically to find matching informons during a limited, short-term search time period.
The present invention is directed to an information processing system especially adapted for use at internet portal or other web sites to make network searches for information entities relevant to user queries, with collaborative feedback data and content-based data and adaptive filter structuring, being used in filtering operations to produce significantly improved search results.